Biblical and Pastoral Bridgework: Interdisciplinary Conversations

By Denise Dombkowski Hopkins and Michael S. Koppel

Whether singly or jointly authored, these essays model dynamic, interactive reading of human situations and biblical texts. The exchange between texts and human situations reveals the multivalent complexities of both human situations and scriptural texts, and cautions against a simplistic use of the Bible and of pastoral theory and practices. Drawing upon both texts throughout the Bible and diverse psychological theories, the authors bridge the long-standing divide between the "classical" and "practical" disciplines in biblical studies and pastoral care. The aim of this book is to spur readers' imaginations toward critical engagement with the Bible and with one another to promote healing, connection, and justice in a world crying out for wholeness. Gems hidden in plain sight within the Bible can become powerful tools for illuminating the pains and promises of the human condition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666775358

Book preview

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Lament Psalms through the Lens of Trauma

Psalms 74, 79, and 137

Denise Dombkowski Hopkins

Michael S. Koppel

Abstract

The multi-disciplinary approach of trauma studies can help Bible teachers, preachers, and pastoral caregivers use violent lament psalms 74, 79, and 137 as models for recovery among individuals and groups that have experienced trauma. These psalms express painful memories that can be accessed and acknowledged when disclosed in a caring environment such as worship or a therapist’s office. The range of emotions in these psalms reminds us that all expressions of trauma are partial and provisional, including revenge fantasies (Ps 137), confession of responsibility (Ps 79), and anger over divine abandonment (Ps 74).

Introduction

During the last decade, reading biblical texts through the lens of trauma studies has created a beneficial multi-disciplinary framework for understanding so-called problematic (read violent) texts in the Bible, particularly in the prophetic corpus. Insights of trauma studies are now being applied to other biblical texts, including Job, Qoheleth, Lamentations, 2 Corinthians, and Psalms.¹ As Christopher Frechette suggests, texts that are violent or that view suffering as God’s punishment and abandonment can be called controlled substances, that is, texts that can be injurious when handled improperly but therapeutic when administered carefully.² Trauma studies can help Bible teachers and preachers, as well as pastoral caregivers, handle these texts carefully in order to promote recovery among those who have experienced trauma. Careful handling can encourage access to and acknowledgment of painful memories without re–traumatizing.

Psalm laments are saturated not only with Israel’s violent imprecations aimed at its enemies, but also with evocative descriptions of divine violence directed at both Israel and its foes. Many have either avoided these psalms, claiming they are toxic³ and not worthy of believers, or have dismissed them as a negative foil for superior New Testament teaching on anger. Yet the trajectory of psalms scholarship, led by Claus Westermann⁴ with his description of praise and lament as the two poles of prayer, and Walter Brueggemann⁵ with his typology of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation describing seasons of faith, has moved toward an embrace of lament language as part of ancient Israel’s therapeutic process. This process helped Israel deal with its collective trauma produced by a history of invasions (beginning in the eighth century BCE under Assyria), deportations (Assyrian, Babylonian), oppression (Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Seleucid, and Roman), and loss of symbol systems such as the temple and kingship. This collective trauma was addressed by the Hebrew Bible prophets who produced "disaster and survival literature that reflected on the horrors of war and offered hope in communities devastated by Assyria, Babylon, and Persia.⁶ For the prophets and the psalmists, remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims."⁷

Trauma

Trauma comes from the Greek and means wound. We speak of those who have been traumatized, using the passive voice, which is an apt description of the effects of trauma. Trauma can be both individual and collective, overwhelming individual and social mechanisms of coping, memory, and language and terrifying those who experience it with loss of control, self-worth, dignity, and meaning.⁸ A pastiche of definitions of trauma from psychology, sociology, and literary theory frames our discussion:

Trauma is an overwhelming event or experience that (

1

) leaves people (whether individuals or groups) feeling helpless and dehumanized, without the capacities or categories to understand the trauma; (

2

) affects their emotions and memories in sometimes indirect ways; and (

3

) often profoundly and negatively impacts their behavior and interpersonal relationships. Their recovery from trauma may then be defined as the various ways and means by which people (whether individuals or groups) somehow overcome the many ways trauma has wounded them.⁹

Strawn cites James Pennebaker,¹⁰ who analyzes studies showing that disclosure of trauma helps the immune system, while inhibition and non verbalization have an unhealthy effect. Many respond to trauma by avoiding thinking about it or pretending it never happened, but this does not work in the long run. Cathy Caruth points out that violent trauma fragments remain in the mind like broken glass and can be provoked in a mute repetition of suffering.¹¹

Using Ps 35, Strawn argues that both trauma and recovery are at work in the psalm laments, particularly in terms of their honest disclosure of feelings and thoughts about what has been experienced. Strawn agrees with Pennebaker that prayer is a form of disclosure or confiding,¹² and suggests that psalm prayers can be viewed as vehicles of disclosure. In this essay we would like to investigate Pss 74, 79, and 137 as examples of Israel’s disclosure in its process of recovery from trauma. Disclosure, especially in written form, offers a way to confront the trauma that is experienced as unspeakable.¹³ These psalm prayers can contribute to our historical analysis of psychic mentality, which is, first and foremost, mediated through historical documents and literature.¹⁴ With Becker we can see the psalms as cultural artifacts that offer an essential cultural and religious strategy for coping with trauma.¹⁵ The challenge for exegetes is to determine whether the stressors which caused ancient trauma are comparable to modern experiences of trauma. Becker suggests that the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, for example, is comparable to the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 in the United States. Both events symbolize the loss of a core piece of national or cultural identity¹⁶ that contributes to trauma.

Perhaps another comparison can be drawn between the upheaval caused by the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential elections and Israel’s experiences of upheaval. Events then and now caused loss of identity and loss of relationships for many, as well as loss of trust in leadership institutions. While many Americans were elated by election results, many others were frustrated by the outcome and stormed the Capitol in January of 2021. Tension in the national political atmosphere was mirrored in families with different political commitments. It was no surprise, then, when a theological student shared an experience in a private advising meeting before the start of spring semester this year. As a young seminarian, he was struggling with how he would be able one day to model reconciling leadership in the church when he could not bring himself to relate peacefully in his own family. In a return home for winter break, surrounded by members who voted one way while he voted another, the young man talked about his simmering frustration at not being able to bridge the divide between their views. Instead of owning his feelings of anger and fear, John pretended they were not there and expressed his hostility outwardly in what he called snippy and mocking comments to my parents. In a sense, he wanted to punish them for the action they took in voting for Donald Trump.

In psychological terms, he displaced the discomfiting feelings with harsh words directed at his parents. As a young man with a learning disability, he felt himself diminished and marginalized by the presidential candidate’s rhetoric on the campaign trail. He was disappointed his parents did not draw a connection between that inflammatory language and their son’s experience. Absent a way to talk honestly and openly in the family about commonalities and differences, the young man’s unexpressed thoughts and emotions were repressed. He wanted to punish those who had caused him pain, so he did it in an indirect way by mocking his parents for their political decision. This pattern of interaction played out in families and communities across the country in the wake of these unusually divisive elections that shook the foundation of the nation’s identity and values. People living in the same house could not talk to one another. Pauline Boss¹⁷ calls this ambiguous loss or loss without closure; people may be physically present but psychologically absent. The nation’s trauma is lived out daily through the strained and fractured relationships in families, friendships, and communities. We learn anew the meaning of the personal is political.

Psalm 137

"By the rivers of Babylon—

there we sat down and there we wept

when we remembered Zion." (Ps

137

:

1

)¹⁸

In the presence of their tormentors, the psalmist expresses on behalf of the exiles a profound grief and the searing pain of separation from the land of the familiar and the known. Israel remembered that it could not muster energy for talking, much less for singing. And even if the spirit energy should stir, how could it possibly be a resounding song, since the captives’ hearts were not in it? Grief leaves people with just enough energy to put one foot in front of the other, just enough to keep going, but not much more. Being stranded in unfamiliar territory in the throes of grief leaves no capacity for singing. And even if it did, the songs themselves would be tear-filled laments, words closed in the chest or stuck in the throat as tears flow in their place.

It is hard to worship on demand, as v. 3 makes clear. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ Pastoral care practitioners embody patience in sitting with people and listening to their stories. But healers can turn to tormentors when they push for a quick fix or an easy answer, or ask a judgmental question—why is this still an issue? We often see this happening in the approach to veterans. Brock and Lettini¹⁹ have advocated for moral integrity in responding to veterans’ needs and calling civilian communities to do their part in mending the wounds of war. This mending is hard work, and it takes time. Family members, congregations, civic groups, and friends (anyone or any group that does not empathize with the searing pain of loss associated with having a worldview or life experience turned upside down) can unwittingly engage in the soul suffocating behavior shown by Israel’s captors. And when we fail to understand and to empathize, we ought not be surprised when pain lashes out in seemingly vengeful rage. As Herman notes, the recitation of facts without the accompanying emotions is a sterile exercise, without therapeutic effect.²⁰ This rage is a raw, open wound crying for healing recognition. We can unwittingly become tormentors when we refuse to acknowledge the anger, fear, and hostility that fester within those struggling with trauma.

Revenge Fantasies

Joan startled herself into a new orientation when she confessed to her pastor, In my dream, I walked into a large open grassy field and noticed two figures in the distance. One looks like my father, and another looks like a young woman. I don’t know who exactly, since I could not see her face. She turns and stabs the man. She then drops the knife and walks away. This dream freed something in Joan. It was as if she could finally claim her life. The psychic killing released her from being held hostage by a looming figure in her life, the man responsible for traumatic pain in her early life and into adulthood. The dream initially hooked feelings of remorse that gradually gave way to a newfound sense of identity and purpose. Cumulative trauma, that is, increments of neglect or harm over years, can also make us go dead.²¹ The violent dream shared with her pastor, who did not condemn or shame her for having it, showed Joan the path toward healing, even though it did not feel that way initially.

Pastoral counselors, pastors, and care providers know what it’s like to hear confessions of remorse or guilt about actions or thoughts. The act of confession is first an acknowledgment of what needs to change. Giving voice to inner reality in the presence of a known and respected other who intends well-being, and not harm, is therapeutic. Joan’s violent dream shared with her pastor is not unlike the violent ending to Psalm 137, in which anger and calls for retribution finally erupt in vv. 7–9. These are the verses left out of liturgical (think denominational hymnals) and popular (think Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Melodians) musical renditions of Psalm 137. Daughter Babylon is warned in v. 9: Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock! Compare similar practices of warfare in the ancient world in 2 Kgs 8:12; Isa 13:16; Hos 10:14; Nah 3:10). Psalm laments can help the church deal with trauma and the hurtful side of human experience in worship, yet the church has restricted our praying of angry psalms. Responsive psalm readings in the back of many hymnals use the scissors-and-paste method²² of cutting out the angry parts of laments.

In Ps 137, the exiles’ plea is for God to execute justice against the perpetrators. This is a plea for meaning in the world and for God’s reassertion of sovereignty and order lost in the experience of trauma. The violent language of vv. 7–9 has a healing function that can be accessed without harming anyone.²³ The holding environment or therapeutic frame is offered by the worship setting in which this psalm is recited after the exile. Within the safe and controlled environment of worship, the memories of torment, grief, and anger can be accessed symbolically and reframed to counter paralysis and collapse into helplessness from the trauma of exile. Within worship, these words are uttered in the presence of those who can provide emotional support and a moral compass for the survivor.²⁴ Outside of the worship environment, however, these words become revenge fantasies which Herman²⁵ describes as mirror images of trauma that imagine what was done to me will be done to you. Each fantasy avoids the difficult work of coming to terms with the effects of the trauma.²⁶

We argue that these fantasies also express Israel’s moral injury. Moral injury names the hidden wound of war that is the result of reflection on memories of war or other extreme traumatic conditions. It comes from having transgressed one’s basic moral identity and violated core moral beliefs.²⁷ Such injury can be seen, for example, in Lam 4:10: the hands of compassionate mothers have boiled their own children. In Lam 2:20, Israel remembers the self-inflicted atrocities of the destruction of Jerusalem and judges them negatively. These transgressions need to be named before healing can begin.

Such wounds generate fear and reinforce animosity against the oppressors. Communal laments in Book III of the Psalter repeatedly dehumanize and demonize Israel’s enemies, as do the individual laments in Books II and III. Enemies viciously destroyed the temple and reviled God’s name (Pss 74:3–8, 10, 18; 79:13, 10; 83:4). This enemy behavior justifies Israel’s pleas for equally brutal retributive justice, e.g., in Pss 79:6, 12; 83:13–18.²⁸ Studies have shown that actual revenge does not provide relief but makes things worse. For Frechette,²⁹ the difference between a revenge fantasy and the safe, controlled expression of rage in psalm laments is that God rather than the victims is the agent of action, as we see in Psalm 137:7: Remember O Lord, against the Edomites and in Psalm 109:21: But you, O Lord my Lord, act on my behalf for your name’s sake. We need also remember, as Smith-Christopher³⁰ reminds us, this angry rhetoric comes from a time in Israel when it was not actually capable of engaging in this level of violence against enemies; it represents the psychology of grief and anger, not national policy. We need to take care not to use this language today to justify genocide carried out by national powers.

Anger

Pastoral theologians exercise care by leading communities through a process of making meaning of suffering by receiving the intense feelings, including anger, that often accompany this suffering. This requires locating one’s own or a community’s anger relative to structural power. This question begs for reflection: do we see ourselves collectively as the oppressed or the oppressor? Within the collective, are we oppressor or oppressed? The questions themselves are presented as either/or distinctions when lived experience is far more complicated. Still, it is useful for pastoral leaders to acknowledge differentials in power and to find language and means to minister with people inside and outside the community.

Andrew Sung Park argues that the anger of the oppressor and the anger of the oppressed are not the same. The anger of oppressed people flows from wounds inflicted from outside forces; he calls this shame anger which is a response to the threat of having been helplessly wronged or hurt by others that hooks shame and humiliation at being unable to assert power.³¹ The Korean language names traumatic pain and shame as han, the collapsed anguish of the heart due to psychosomatic, social, economic, political, and cultural repression and oppression.³² Care ministers help survivors of oppressive life situations to grapple toward meaning through a range of emotions and thoughts; ministries of care offer opportunity to listen to and validate the shame and humiliation of people who have experienced trauma. In time and with support, shame anger can beneficially fuel advocacy toward justice and resistance to systems of oppression.

The work required of those in positions of power is different; they must come to terms with guilt anger or the aggressive anger of oppressors.³³ This anger is not a response to a threat, but rather people’s belligerent hostility toward their victims. It is the oppressive or controlling action of offenders toward those whom they have targeted.³⁴ Both shame anger and guilt anger are expressions of moral injury from different sides of the experience. Psalm 137 captures both the guilt/aggressive anger of the Babylonian captors as well as the suffering/shame anger of the traumatized Judeans. This smoldering energy and boxed-in hope of shame anger calls for realignment of structural power in church and in society.³⁵ In Ps 137, this realignment is violent, and God is petitioned to carry it out so that the world makes sense again. To name this anger as sin locks the oppressed in place and fuels illnesses of body, mind, and spirit. Pastors give congregational care wherein oppressors and oppressed inhabit shared liturgical space; it is appropriate and necessary to include prayers of healing alongside prayers of confession.

Ministers with marginalized persons need to bear this in mind. In care with Black women, for instance, care providers do well to recognize that remaining strong and resolved can be a coping response that takes the place of the outward expression of pain and grief.³⁶ Chanequa Walker-Barnes cautions Black women to recognize the deleterious impact of the StrongBlackWoman (SBW)³⁷ trope upon their health and well-being. Once an adaptive response to racist and sexist stereotypes at the start of the twentieth century (e.g., Mammy, Jezebel), SBW has become maladaptive and costly as a constant self-perpetuating stress response. Actually a form of PTSD, the SBW trope was precipitated by cultural trauma that threatened Black existence and identity across time and generations.

In a seminal work on anger, pastoral theologian Andrew Lester argues against the notion of anger as sin or a reflection of humanity’s fallen nature. Lester constructs a pastoral theology of anger that draws on constructivist philosophy, narrative theory, and neuroscience in conversation with biblical and theological scholarship to argue for honoring and harnessing the gift of emotion: [E]motions have developed in biological history of humans to serve a positive purpose.³⁸ Lester defines anger as the physical, mental, and emotional arousal pattern that occurs in response to a perceived threat to the self-characterized by the desire to attack or defend.³⁹ Humans are hard-wired for anger (among other emotions) to survive. Since emotions ignite in the primitive part of the brain, they reflect being in touch with reality and not separate from it. A principal intention of an emotion is to connect our animal nature with the world in which it is embedded. Emotions respond immediately to the truth of things. They are our most alert form of attention.⁴⁰ The emotion itself, while a vital capacity of being human and part of God’s ordering of creation, needs to be harnessed for beneficial use toward self and with others. We channel this energy toward positive ends by examining both the lens through which we interpret experience and the stories we tell ourselves and others about the experience.

Trauma complicates matters: neural pathways established by past traumatic events can be activated by stimuli that the brain recognizes even when the conscious mind is not immediately aware of the circumstances⁴¹ We must realize that [W]hen we experience anger that seems to be an over-reaction to the present moment, then the wise response is to consider its possible linkage with past trauma(s).⁴² Anger might be activation of an unknown or stored memory. This was true for David, a middle-aged man whose memory of being violated by a babysitter in his early years only began to surface when his own daughters reached the same age as the perpetrator when the abuse occurred. Several years before this memory emerged, he experienced significant anger in his job. He witnessed what he described as the unethical practices of the business. What he observed at work was hooking a strong emotional response; to his mind, it called for moral action. He called the leaders of the organization to account for their practices. Not long afterward, he found himself separated from the company. Anger fueled moral action and he paid a heavy price for it.

As Carroll Saussy notes: Difficult, painful, confounding, energizing, always challenging, anger is complex and multivalent.⁴³ A wise pastoral counselor who worked with David explored in detail the complex and multivalent connections between anger at the injustice experienced at his company and the shame anger that lay dormant within him for years. In each situation, anger is a central emotion. Pastors and clinicians navigate care ministry with people like David by helping them to get in touch with their anger and narrate a healing story for the future.

Memory

Psalm 137 allows the Israelite exiles in Babylon to get in touch with their anger over the Babylonian invasion and their forced deportation. The exiled community clearly sees itself as oppressed, though the peasants who remained in Judah would claim that they were doubly oppressed by the exiled elite and the Babylonians. The shocking violence of the language about dashing the heads of babies against the rocks perhaps results from the activation of Israel’s collective stored memory about previous trauma under the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE. Second Kgs 17:5–41 recounts the siege of Samaria (the capital of the northern kingdom Israel), the deportation of the Israelites to Assyria (v. 23), and the resettlement of the land by inhabitants from other parts of the Assyrian empire (vv. 24–28).

We can understand how this memory was activated among the exiles when we review the demographic data charting the changes that occurred in Judah between the seventh and fifth centuries BCE.⁴⁴ Just prior to the time of exile, it is estimated that 110,000 people lived in Judah; after the Persians defeated Babylon and instituted a period of return, there were only 30,000. Jerusalem contained 25,000 people prior to exile, but in the Persian period, only 2,750; this constitutes about 12 percent of the city’s population before the Babylonian invasion. These estimates suggest that most of the exiles to Babylon were residents of Jerusalem. No wonder Nehemiah forced the redistribution of the populace by bringing 10 percent of the surrounding population to live in the city (Neh 11). Only a few thousand exiles returned under the Persians; the city remained poor until the Hellenistic period. One can understand how the level of violent rhetoric in Ps 137 is fueled by linking traumas in Israel’s history.

Psalm 79

Ruins, unburied bodies scavenged by birds of prey, blood poured out like water—these images jolt the reader of lament psalm 79.⁴⁵ Like many of the psalms in Book III of the Psalter, Psalm 79 offers a response to Babylonian exile and the destruction of Jerusalem. Perhaps this psalm was used later as a response to the oppression of the Persian empire or to the terror experienced under Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the second century BCE. It is recited today on Friday evenings at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and on the ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av), which is a liturgical commemoration of the destruction of the two Jerusalem temples (in 587 BCE and 70 CE) and other disasters in Jewish history. This festival is marked by mourning and fasting. In the ritual use of this psalm, we see reflected two of the three steps outlined by Judith Herman for recovery from trauma⁴⁶: establish safety (within the environment of worship) and mourn the traumatic experience (ritual fasting and prayer) in a non-judgmental context. These two steps lead to step three—reconnecting with ordinary life.

Safety within the environment of worship is key to understanding the production and use of psalms in trauma recovery for ancient Israel and for us today. Strawn⁴⁷ is helpful in this connection when he introduces object relations theory as part of his psalms hermeneutic. He suggests that life with God in the psalms consists of a struggle over trust, that is, a struggle over proper attachment. For Strawn, psalm poetry offers what Winnicott terms a holding environment or therapeutic frame within which the damaged relationship with God can be re-formed. According to Strawn, honest disclosure [is] a reflex of secure attachment and a primary means to maintain such.⁴⁸

Winnicott’s theory of the holding environment emerged from clinical observation of what infants need for healthy development: tactile holding and total environmental provision.⁴⁹ This provision is the relational space fostered between caregiver and infant that adequately responds to physical needs and psychological growth. Good-enough care is defined as the ability of a caregiver to meet the infant’s spontaneous, alive sense, the true self, with sufficient regularity so that the self is recognized and affirmed.⁵⁰ When care is good enough, the infant experiences a bonded and secure relationship that forms the basis of trust and love.⁵¹

The concept of holding extends to therapeutic practice in the following way: caregivers relate with care seekers in attentive listening and reflective interpretation that together communicate to the care seeker: I hear and receive the whole of you. Reflective listening and interpretation that receives only part and not the whole is likely to contribute to a care seeker’s frustration and a caregiver’s shame. Holding as a care practice is affirmation of another